Please Come
by Fordanoia
Summary: In which Stan takes a few days after Ford's postcard to head towards Oregon. He quickly regrets waiting at all to leave when he does arrive to the address and sees something in the snow.
1. Chapter 1

'Please Come,' the letter said.

The immediate feeling was something hopeful, but more than that – worried. Stan pushed down the feeling with an embittered thought.

Guy lives up in some fancy house with his research money, and after what? 13 years? He FINALLY has something to say to Stan and he only spares him two words. Two words that, he realizes, is just some plea just asking him to come to wherever he's at. Like Stan is just going to drop everything he's got going on because he spent five minutes to drop him a post card. Psh, whatever! Granted… he doesn't have anything actively going on here and now besides laying low, but that wasn't the point!

The point was you don't just send someone two words and expect them to come to your place, no explanation, nothing. Just, please come.

Stan scoffed, setting the letter onto the nightstand of the hotel room before resolutely sitting right back at the end of the bed again. There was some gnawing instinct to pack everything and head off, but Stan just shoved it to the back of his mind, focusing back on the game show currently on TV.

He keeps ignoring the post card for another 3 days, letting it gather dust on the nightstand, untouched. That's when he picks it up and looks at it again though. The lettering wasn't exactly neat… it looked pretty rushed if anything… Like the nerd could barely stop to even just write out the simple pl- the simple request.

What does he owe him though? If Ford really needed help then… come on, he wouldn't ask Stan of all people. Why would he ask Stan? After a decade and going through college, he had more resources than an estranged twin he refused to even send a word to before.

Stan holds up for a few more days, he's got this hotel for the week after all. However, a thought finally hits him. How desperate would Ford have to be to contact _him_ of all people?

He packs what he cares to bring and gets on the highway to Oregon, using the cash that was owed to the hotel for gas money.

Ice and snow slicks up the roads once he gets far enough north making his attention split between paying attention to the road and pushing back worried thoughts. If it was **_that_** urgent Ford would have called him. There's no way he was expecting him to leave the second he got the letter. It'd probably take most people a couple days to just up and leave on some road trip. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been too time important.

Still, Stan is anxious as he drives into the woods – tired from the drive he barely took breaks from. He spots something when he's about to park the car. It's several yards away from the actual shack, but a barely snowed over form makes him pull his car to a quick stop and turn it off, hopping out of the car.

Even through the flurry of snow he can see snow-dusted brown hair and Stan sprints, leaving his car door open. "Ford?!"

He messily slides to a stop near the body near _Ford_. It's Ford and he's just barely shifting, an unmistakably six-fingered hand near his head, straining very slightly. There's heavy impressions in the snow by him, like he'd fallen twenty feet back and had just- started crawling across the ground. There's a couple of items back there too, but Stan spends no time even bother registering what they are right now. He's already pulling Ford up by his arm, trying to pick him up.

"Ford!" He turns his head just slightly towards him, and he mumbles something, but it's too shaky for Stan to make it out. His whole body is giving trembles every few seconds, which is more worrisome than if he'd just been shivering the whole time. "Okay- okay, I'm getting you inside." He tells him, his own voice shaking a bit.

Stan roughly starts to pull Ford along, his feet dragging on the snowy ground, only weakly cycling – he should probably just pick him up entirely, but Stan doesn't dare to waste a second to even see if Ford can walk.

It still takes far too long in his mind for them to reach the porch – and Stan is repeatedly muttering curses and half assurances under his breath the whole time.

He hefts Ford over to one arm and tries the door _which is locked_. "Damnit!" He curses, and tries to shove against the door to no avail, of course.

Ford is hazily looking over at the shack, and his breath is coming out shallow and god damn it Stan hopes like hell the key is in one of the pockets on him because the alternative is going back to his car to grab the crowbar from the back and breaking in that window.

"YES!" Stan pulls out a key- "Oh, fucking of course." It's a ring of a few keys which means more time to find the RIGHT key. He shoves one key in, trying it, before the next one – fumbling to use it with one hand. Quickly enough though, he finally has the door and he's carrying Ford inside to a house with messes pressed against the walls.

The house – is nearly as cold as the outside which just makes the situation worse because how is he going to get Ford warm?

He stops when he sees a room with an unlit fireplace and a chair – it's no couch, but it's the best thing he's found so far. Stan sets Ford into the chair. "Stay here," he says before he's flat out running back through the house.

He has to run up to the damn second floor to actually find a bedroom. There's a mirror partially covered, a ton of junk just piled on top of the bed itself, and a thin layer of dust on everything in the room.

Grabbing the edge of the blankets he holds tight and pulls it off, everything loudly clattering to the wooden floor. Thankfully there's a few blankets and at least one of them is a heavy duvet.

Stan barely stops when he's jogging on his way back as he notices the thermostat on the wall – it's switched off. "Seriously?!" He flicks the switch for the air and turns the dial to the highest temperature, hearing a shudder of the vents turning on in the walls.

When he reaches the room again, Ford is, thankfully, still in the chair and he notices for a brief second how his fingers are barely flexing the slightest bit. "Okay, okay," he says setting the blankets down, "clothes and shoes. They're all drenched."

Ford is responsive, but it's so delayed. At the very least though, Ford nods slightly and he moves as much as it seems he's able in order to help.

Stan is tossing aside the ice-encrusted coat and boots, but he pauses briefly after he's chucked the shirt because even despite the red of Ford's skin he can see various wounds across much of it – some bandaged, others seeming only recently 'healed' or even just scabbed over. He's got his own scars, but the worrisome thing is how NEW every one of these looks.

He continues. "When you're not dying you are telling me what the Hell is going on." Stan says, continuing, tossing boots and more into the wet pile before he's quickly wrapping Ford in layers of blankets, cocooning him in. Stan's own hands are shaking, making it difficult.

He's tucking the third blanket around his brother when he says something, voice slurring.

"What? What is it?" Stan looks back up at Ford's face. There's a concentrated effort along with a desperate urgency.

He takes a few normal sized breaths, which sounds like it's taking him most of his effort. Then he tries again. "D-Door. Lock the… door."

Stan feels a creep of cold over his skin. He wants to ask a million questions about what the hell is going on and who is he in trouble with, but Ford can barely talk as is. "I got it." He tells him, finishing tucking the blanket in before he does walk off. He goes to shut the door which he hadn't even bothered closing before, glancing out into the snowy landscape for someone as he does. There's nobody. That doesn't mean there won't be someone later though.

He locks the door… and sees the several other locks adorning the door as well. All of which he uses too.

Back in the room, there's thankfully wood already in the fireplace and some fire starters nearby. Stan gets a fire started, then pushes the chair Ford is in close to it.

Finally, Stan sits against the wall beside the fireplace, rubbing his hands together before putting them up against his forehead. He glances over and over at Ford who seems to be on the bare edge of consciousness – and Stan can't relax. He _can't_.

If he had waited another day Ford would be dead. Frozen to death because for some reason his body couldn't make it just _half a minute_ longer to reach the door. He doesn't know what's going on and Ford almost died. Ford could _still_ die.

Stan's not cold, but he's shaking so bad that it's past pathetic now.

* * *

AUTHORS NOTE:

This STARTED as a one shot, but I wound up writing more for it and *checks* yeah, I got 6k for the google doc of this.

Don't by any means expect a long fic though! Enjoy the paranoid and mullet sons!


	2. Chapter 2

Stop being a baby. He's _okay_. He's okay, he's okay, he's okay.

Ford just had to warm up, that was all. There was nothing else for Stan to do right now except wait.

It takes a half hour before Ford even seems a hint better. He keeps shifting, and his eyes were half open whenever Stan glances over at him. The only thing that eventually changes is his breathing evening out.

Stan lets out a slow breath, letting his arms rest on top of his knees. He's finally able to actually feel like Ford isn't about to die in that chair. "Give a guy a heart attack, why don'tcha, Ford." He mutters.

He doesn't honestly think Ford can even really hear, but then his brother looks over at him. It actually takes him a couple seconds and Stan is about to ask him what it is when Ford eventually talks. The words comes out thick, and he sounds as exhausted as he looks. "You came..."

Stan lets out a short, stressed laugh. "Yeah, heh, I came." He actively decided against coming for about a week, but hey. Who was bothering to think about that little detail, _right?_

"I didn't think..."

"Guess that makes two of us then," he jokes with a smile to him, regretting letting the words come out of his mouth at all, "ha..." Stan runs a hand over his sleeve, pretending to warm up his fingers. "Seriously though, if you could not - I don't know - freeze to death here, that'd be great."

"'M not planning on it." Ford says, pausing to shift underneath the sheets again. He winces a bit and continues. "There's a door... Stanley. Downstairs."

"D'ya need something from-" Stan cuts himself off because his brother is fervently shaking his head already.

" _ **No**_. No... Don't let anybody... down there." He takes a couple quick breaths. "Don't let me down there."

" _What?_ " Stan pulls his head back, and quickly enough he thinks Ford didn't actually hear his own words right. "You mean, don't let you down..?"

Ford shakes his head again, and struggles to look him in the eyes as he emphasizes slowly. "Don't let me near the door."

Okay, that was the opposite of what Stan was hoping he'd meant. "Ford. _What the Hell?_ "

Ford only frowns at that. "It's important, Stanley... please."

"Okay." Stan relents, "Okay, nobody goes downstairs, including you."

His brother noticeably relaxes, and barely nods his head.

"But!" Stan adds on quickly, to keep his attention. "You gotta tell me what's down there."

Ford understands him, but he looks down thinking. "It's... the folly of man's lindless-" he stops at that though, concentrating, "I mean, the... endless limit." Again, he stops, visibly frustrated at that, before he takes an uneven, deep breath. "A big mistake." He finally answers.

"Oh, okay. So, not vague and cryptic at all, gotcha." Stan says.  
"I'm not asking for a full explanation or anything right now." Later was another story though. He uses his hands to gesture at Ford. "Just gimme a simple one word description. Drugs, weapons, what?"

Ford looks at him, thinks for a long moment before finally telling him. "It's a machine."

Stan claps his hands together, holding them together. "Okay, a machine." He still didn't know what was going on, but positives! He could at least rule out drug cartels… probably.

"It has to stay off." Ford added.

"What happens if it turns on?"

" _A lot_."

Still vague and cryptic, but he wasn't going to fault Ford for that one. If Ford couldn't get the answer out within ten words than Stan realized he wasn't gonna get it yet. "Okay," He says. "Anything else? In general, I mean."

"...I dropped the food." Ford noted tiredly, losing focus.

He nodded his head. "Alright." Stan ran a hand through his hair before standing up. "Outside, I'm guessing. I'll grab it real quick."

"Careful..." He said as Stan passed him.

Stan paused, glancing back at him, before going back out. He shut the front door after himself, feeling on edge the further away from the house - and Ford - that he walked.

Now that he was actually looking at the items in the snow he quickly realized what they were. He picked up the box first, wiping the snow off of it and carrying it under his arm, before carefully picking up the crossbow. _Christ_ , Stan ran a free hand over his face. Yup, Ford had been walking around _with a damn crossbow_.

Stan wondered to himself for the umpteenth time since he had gotten here about what was going _on?_

He tromped over to his car to swing the door closed. He fished the duffel bag out of his trunk too, cringing as it shut with a loud creak. He checked over his shoulders after the noise, half expecting to see someone by the trees.

Gah, this was stupid. Stan started back to the shack, feeling significantly more comfortable once he was back on the porch again. He shut the door behind him and set the crossbow down to lock everything.

He was in the middle of the woods. It's not like anyone was actually out here. Even if someone was around the snowfall muffled any sounds he'd made.

Then again... just how alone was it out here? Sure, Ford could have just isolated himself completely. That's definitely what it looked like too. Why all the extra locks though if nobody was around here though? One lock would have been enough. Eight was just- it was _beyond_ excessive. Not to mention, all the fresh injuries Ford had on him.

Even considering the less than 'fun' idea of self harm- he had never seen someone do ** _that much_** to themselves. It wasn't even just the number of injuries, but the range of what Stan had spotted. Cuts, burns, and a heck of a lot more.

The other thing though? It didn't look like outright torture either. At least not any kind of torture that Stan had seen or personally- well... point was torture didn't look like it was on the table here either.

Ford had sent the postcard something over a week ago. One of those scratches couldn't have been any older than that, and he really doubted they'd have let Ford go if they were doing this much damage in the first place.

Unless, whoever it was kept capturing and releasing Ford over and over? Who would do that though? Sure, yeah, torture – he got that it wasn't a strict line of A to B. Still, if someone wanted that machine downstairs then why not just blast their way to it while they already had Ford?

Maybe Ford was the only one that knew something? Still, _again_ , this wasn't how torture for getting info went. It looked more like someone was jerking Ford around for the hell of it.

If it was just about the machine, they should have already had a couple chances to get to it. If it wasn't about the machine though then why was Ford still here? He wasn't absolutely surrounded so he could have gone somewhere!

It'd make sense if he was just staying because of whatever the high stakes with that machine were…. _except_ if it was so important then why didn't they already take it?

It didn't make sense. _None of this_ made sense.

A slight smile crooked one side of his mouth up as he let out a stressed laugh and ran a hand through his hair, finally turning away from the door.

Oh, _yeah_ , and Ford wanted to be kept away from downstairs.

Because that was apparently the second most important thing on Ford's list for this whole situation! ' _Lock the door and oh yes- I can't even walk right now, but keep me away from that door._ '

He doubted Ford would even have the energy to sleepwalk out of the room he was in right now!

Ford… _was_ still in that room, of course. Stan had only been gone for five minutes. Not even that. Plus, he would have noticed someone sneaking through the front door, right?

Stan walked back to the room, letting out a breath when he reached it. Ford was still in the chair, and he was asleep at that too.

All Stan had to worry about for now was making sure nobody tried to break in. It wasn't like anybody could get past solid wood and eight metal locks though.

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES:

I actually already had this written, but I wanted to wait at least a day or two before I posted it!

Thank you, Nina EverBlade! I've been very thankful in that I've never had any of y'all pushing me to write more or faster! I know especially with some fics that I've been slow to update.

The reason this is becoming MORE than a one shot is because well when readers get excited on something where I do know what to write for a next chapter... chances are VERY HIGH that I'm gonna get excited myself and make more!


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